Confucius's View of Destiny and Its Development

Confucius' view of destiny mainly includes two implications. One is the heaven in the primeval cults, which is a superstitious view of destiny stemmed from Yin Civilization. Yet the Confucius regenerates it from a perceiver's view. He emphasizes awareness of the destiny as well as the dread of it. The other is the heaven as the source and base of morality, which is related to potentates' explanations of the source of their regimes in the early Zhou Dynasty. But the Confucius makes it over from politics to ethics. After the Confucius, primeval leading exponents of Confucianism develop the view of destiny from different aspects. Mencius thinks of destiny as moral rations and ethical feelings. He regards benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom as the destiny's attributes and people's natural attributes. Master Xun claims 'to conquer the destiny and to use it'. He thinks that destiny is not the form of a certain mystery but an infallible and immanent trend in the nature. People can achieve their own goals once they master the destiny. Dong Zhongshu further develops the Confucius' view of destiny from the aspect of theological teleology. On the basis of theories of Confucius, Mencius and Master Xun, he makes an ontological construction of the Confucian ethical politics systematically. He abstracts the heaven from feudalist moral relationship, and makes it mysterious and ethical. By subjectively building a bridge from the heaven to people and giving inviolability and supreme to feudal ethical principles, he makes the Confucianist ideas possible to arrange regimentations.